Children are "born believers" in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic survey conducted in United Kingdom.

Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford"s Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose. He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God.

"The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children"s minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent and supreme Being is behind that purpose," he told to BBC and added: "If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God."

Dr Barrett claimed anthropologists have found that in some cultures children believe in God even when religious teachings are withheld from them. “In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe." he said. Dr Barrett emphasized that children are more likely to believe in creationism rather than evolution, despite what they may be told by parents or teachers.